Yojimbo & Sanjuro
The first thing that strikes you in Akira Kurosawa’s “Yojimbo” is the music. Composed by Masaru Sato, it’s eccentric, rhythmic, and filled with bold gestures– think Henri Mancini by way of Ennio Morricone’s Spaghetti Western scores. Of course, that comparison is only possible in hindsight, since it was Kurosawa’s film (and its 1962 follow-up “Sanjuro”) that inspired Sergio Leone to invent the Spaghetti Western when he remade “Yojimbo” into “A Fistful of Dollars” in 1964. And when I say Leone “remade” “Yojimbo,” I mean basically recreated it shot-for-shot, plot line-for-plot line from Kurosawa’s disreputably great samurai film. I’m sure the Japanese master might have been able to sue Leone for the blatant plagiarism if the latter film wasn’t so artistically thrilling in its own right.
If you read my review of “A Fistful of Dollars” last week, then the plot of “Yojimbo” will be familiar to you. Toshiro Mifune stars as Sanjuro, a samurai who now walks the roads as a ronin, which is the word for a master-less samurai. He walks into a dusty and empty town ruled by rival gangs: one run out of a brothel by Seibei (Seizaburo Kawazu), and the other run by Ushitora (Kyu Sazanka). He quickly makes his presence felt through the help of the local bar owner, killing two of Ushitora’s men, and chopping off the arm of a third. After that, his services are available to the highest bidder, but at the start he enjoys watching the macho pissing contest between the two gangs until he sees the opportunity to cash in.
“Yojimbo” is arguably as much a shock to the system as Kurosawa’s “Rashomon” was in 1950. By this point in his career, “K” had already directed the samurai masterpiece “Seven Samurai” and “The Hidden Fortress” (which inspired George Lucas in making “Star Wars”), both of which are traditional looks at the genre from a filmmaker deeply inspired by the westerns of John Ford. With “Yojimbo,” Kurosawa turns the archetypes of the genre Ford built on their head to create a wicked and exciting dark comedy, with Sanjuro (shamelessly playing both sides against one another) acting as ring-leader to the chaos that ensues. Bodies turn up all over town; the coffin maker should be making a ton, but as he says at one point, “When the fighting gets this bad, they don’t bother with coffins.” Kurosawa was a master of action, as he showed time and again in his samurai films (not just the early ones but late masterpieces “Kagemusha” and “Ran”), but here Kurosawa isn’t after scope and heroism but getting his hands as dirty with dust and blood as his evil characters. It’s a thrilling sight, but not in the way his other films were. And at the center of it is Mifune’s Sanjuro, who not only creates a brilliant portrait of the Old West desperado with a sword, but also points to the absurdist portraits of western archetypes to come when Leone and Clint Eastwood got a hold of this material.
“Sanjuro,” released the year after “Yojimbo,” is as much a sequel to the earlier film as “For a Few Dollars More” is to “A Fistful of Dollars.” Whereas Eastwood’s character was a different character each time, this is the same Sanjuro we saw in the earlier film– smarter than everyone else, and just as adept at causing trouble. Here, he comes across a family of brothers who are intent on rooting out corruption in their family and village. After teaching them the error of their ways after they go to the Superintendent for help, he becomes a mentor to the young fighters going into battle.
Watching the two films back-to-back, one wishes Kurosawa and Mifune had continued to make films of Sanjuro’s exploits. Sort of a samurai James Bond, if you will. (Yes, I am aware of Zatoichi, Asian cinema aficionados. And yes, he is closer to Bond than Sanjuro.) Unlike that venerable British spy, however, you couldn’t picture another actor in this role, and anyone other than Kurosawa, the grand master of action films for not just his own work but those he inspired, directing. In that way, it’s much closer to Leone and Eastwood’s creations, not just in conception but in tone. Like “Yojimbo,” “Sanjuro” is closer to dark comedy than the rousing epics of Kurosawa’s “Seven Samurai” and “The Hidden Fortress.” It’s as if Kurosawa, who had gone on a tear of masterpieces that started with 1950’s revolutionary “Rashomon” and continued with “Ikiru”; “Seven Samurai”; “Throne of Blood”; “The Lower Depths”; and “The Hidden Fortress,” decided to take a break from serious explorations of individuality, humanity and honor and act as a director-for-hire on mindless silliness. Think Tarantino following “Pulp Fiction” and “Jackie Brown” with “Kill Bill” and “Grindhouse” and you’ll get my drift. But with “K,” as it was with Tarantino, things aren’t so black-and-white. Honor and humanity are still important themes for Kurosawa, even in films as outrageously entertaining as these are.
This is more true in “Sanjuro” than with “Yojimbo.” In the earlier film, few characters were innocent; the town was populated by the types of gangsters and evildoers you might see in an American western. Here, Sanjuro is helping nine boys, unskilled at fighting, try and stop corruption in their village. Rather than an instigator of violence, Sanjuro is now more diplomatic and less a misfit. He genuinely wants to help the boys take back their village. He isn’t in it for money but honor. And he’ll do anything, even allowing an old woman to climb on his back to scale a wall for escape. Such moments are central to the character, and Mifune (Kurosawa’s lead in most of his masterpieces from this era) plays them with memorable swagger and soulfulness. That doesn’t mean actor and director don’t cut loose in these films; as you’ll see, they have a lot of fun cutting in these movies, and it’s a great deal more fun watching them do it.
